The kitchen is among the most-trafficked areas in the home; it’s even been said to be the heart of the home. Your kitchen cabinets are a central element in the overall design of your kitchen. If you are interested in doing some kitchen remodeling, keep these emerging cabinet design trends in mind.

Personalized Cabinets

Personalized and tailored designs for cabinets are very popular with both homeowners and cabinet companies. Even if you don’t go with fully custom made kitchen cabinets, there are many affordable, design-friendly semi-custom cabinets available. Over time, cabinet companies have come up with many styles of cabinets to match a variety of home styles and designs. Here you can find a comparison between different types of cabinets.

Lazy Susans

Lazy Susans that are strategically placed in cabinets, especially corner cabinets, go a long way towards organizing your kitchen. They also make it easier to find and store things in hard-to-reach places.

Modern, Clean Lines

Simple cabinet door styles using clean lines are a good way to ensure design flexibility in the long term. Modern-style kitchens have been gaining steam in the design world and are not going anywhere. One modern design trend, the black and white kitchen, pairs well with clean lines and subtle designs and can help to offset the tension between rustic, modern, and transitional kitchens.

Shaker Style

Shaker style cabinets have remained extremely prevalent in kitchens for many years. Normally simple in design with a recessed center, these cabinets work well in just about any style of kitchen, from traditional to modern, contemporary, or retro. Though they may appear at first glance to be a plain, square design without much room for creativity, many attractive styles of shaker cabinets have been developed since the 1800s. With their simple designs, shaker cabinets tend to let the material do the talking, which is why is it always a good idea to go with a premium wood in order to get the most out of them. Shaker style cabinets also remain a top choice for clean, white painted cabinets.

Frameless European Style

Characterized by its lack of frame and easy accessibility, these European style cabinets are stylish design choice for your kitchen cabinets.

Open Shelving

In the interest of simplicity, some homeowners are eliminating doors on cabinets altogether. An open shelving system has many advantages, like eliminating the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon. Keeping everything in the open eliminates the need to hunt around for things behind closed doors.

White, Gray, and Neutral Colors

White cabinets, another classic modern trend, have been in style for a while, but they are being increasingly joined by gray and other neutral-color cabinets as well. Neutral colors and even earthy tones work well with a variety of design elements. They not only provide a sense of warmth, but they allow for the seamless addition of bolder colors elsewhere.

Functional Design

Many modern kitchen cabinets not only look beautiful, but are designed with functionality in mind in order to better accommodate the need for superior storage, organization, and access. There are also additional things you can add to your cabinets to make the most of the space available to you, like toe-kick drawers, pullout shelving, and lazy susans in corner cabinets.

High Tech Cabinet Options

Our culture of constant connectivity has made its way into the kitchen. Built-in charging stations, hands-free functionality, and tablet holders are some of the many high tech options that have been incorporated into cabinet designs.

Pullouts and Rollouts

Decluttering remains a popular trend, and pull-outs and roll-outs in cabinets are gaining traction in kitchen design. While in the past you may have stored knives in a butcher’s block on the counter, a freshly-renovated modern kitchen may include a pullout knife organizer stored in a cabinet. This way the counter remains free of clutter.

Horizontal Orientation Cabinetry

Though square and vertical rectangular cabinetry remains the norm in most kitchens, there is an increasing demand for horizontal cabinetry as well. Horizontal cabinets eliminate the need to stack cabinets, making access much easier. They also give the kitchen a cleaner, more refined look. Additional organization can be added to horizontal cabinets in the form of drawer inserts to keep things from getting too cluttered.

Whether you’re in the process of renovating your kitchen or building your dream kitchen from scratch, keeping an eye on these kitchen cabinet trends will help you create a unique look to your kitchen that is both modern and practical. However, you shouldn’t limit yourself to the trends listed in this article. New trends are always emerging that challenge the norm and redefine what the ultimate modern kitchen will look like. And don’t stop there, use your imagination and you might just come up with a cool new kitchen concept no one else has thought of, leading to a new trend that others can then follow.